Tijuana River Pollution Reaches Crisis Point in San Diego County, Scientists Warn

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KQED

Politics, News, News Commentary

4.6 • 656 Ratings

🗓️ 10 June 2025

⏱️ 56 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

The South Bay in San Diego County is the site of one of the nation’s worst environmental disasters. Fifty million gallons of untreated sewage and industrial chemicals flow daily into the Tijuana River and out of Imperial Beach. New research connects the waste to worsening air quality, which has been linked with headaches, skin infections and gastrointestinal problems in the local population. We’ll talk about why solutions could be years away. Guests: Soumya Karlamangla, national correspondent, The New York Times Paula Stigler Granados, associate professor in the School of Public Health and head of the Environmental Health Division, San Diego State University Paloma Aguirre, mayor, Imperial Beach Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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0:00.0	Support for KQBD Podcasts comes from Earth Justice. As a national legal nonprofit,
0:06.1	Earth Justice has more than 200 full-time lawyers who fight for a healthy environment. They wield the
0:12.3	power of the law to protect people's health, preserve magnificent places in wildlife, and advance
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0:30.1	Greetings, Boomtown.
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0:46.5	From KQED in San Francisco, this is Forum. I'm Mina Kim.
1:07.7	50 million gallons of untreated sewage and industrial chemicals flow from Mexico to Imperial
1:13.3	Beach in San Diego County every day.
1:16.6	It's been a long time problem, but reached new levels of concern recently when researchers
1:20.8	connected the water pollution to worsening air quality, leading to headaches, skin infections,
1:26.4	among other things. We look at why the sewage
1:29.0	and trash have been so hard to address and why solutions could be years away. Join us. Welcome to Forum. I'm Mina Kim.
1:52.3	San Diego's Imperial Beach Shoreline at the border with Mexico has drawn tourists and big wave surfers for decades.
1:59.3	It's where visitors, as the Times Samir Karlamangla writes,
	...

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